<\/p>\n
This is where I am:\u00a0 A
\nlesbian bar in Decatur, Georgia with a woman I know and
\nlove.\u00a0 I left her a lifetime ago and I’ve
\nnever been able to leave her orbit.\u00a0 The
\nsound of laughter is around me – women not trusted.\u00a0 They reflect the total emptiness within me,
\nthese lying youth, these emotional tourists, the careful steppers.\u00a0 Popular homosexuality, women running from a
\nworld that isolates and rapes them.\u00a0 I
\nlook at the empty children a decade younger and, sometimes, I wonder if what I
\nfeel as loneliness is, in fact, life.\u00a0 Made
\nlonely by these struggling animals.<\/p>\n
Music lives like the wind, the witches of power all around,
\nall these controlling creatures who have lost control of themselves. I am a man
\nof shapes and sounds, ass and cunt, tits, stomach, shoulders. \u00a0Turnabout, intruder.\u00a0 Hand and voice and breath.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This well of perfume and musk, the world of
\na woman’s hips.<\/p>\n
My companion is showing her age.\u00a0 She has a few greys in her untamed hair, she
\nhas a tired smile as she brings me a vodka tonic.\u00a0 I’ve been drinking all night, but that
\ndoesn’t come to mind until the glass sits, untouched, in front of me.\u00a0 I’m thinking about the shape of a glass while
\nmy companion leans back in a wicker chair and watches the women, wondering what
\nshe wants.\u00a0 I know what I want, and I
\nwonder if that haunts her.<\/p>\n
I’ve been writing on a cocktail napkin and she watches out
\nof the corner of her eye as I throw it to the ground.\u00a0 She picks it up and flattens it out
\ncarefully, religiously, then hands it back to me with that faded smile of
\nhers.\u00a0 We’re testing each other.\u00a0 That’s how everything between us has always
\nbeen defined.<\/p>\n
There are songs and stories in my head.\u00a0 Scenes from unwritten novels playing out
\novertop these scenes of life.\u00a0 She says
\nshe sees that in me and, as our eyes meet and hold, I finally believe her.<\/p>\n
Here come this song.<\/em>\u00a0 Rasputina cuts the dance music with an At home, five months later, I open my eyes and step away Surrounded by speakers. Sometimes, a Saturday finds me outside.\u00a0 It’s springtime again, and I go to a bar Sometimes, a Saturday finds me with empty bottles, sometimes With the girl from Decatur, At the gas pumps, after our night out at the lesbian bar, Pathetic, clumsy, pale, she strips her clothes off and tries Looking down on her nest of grey hairs, her smell has So, today, it is exactly five months later.\u00a0 The evening before I turn 31, another number I’m the last and the waitress is putting chairs on top of
\nalarming jolt and I take a breath.<\/p>\n
\nfrom where I was.<\/p>\n
\nWith the lights off, I pretend to try and pinpoint where each speaker
\nis, as if I didn’t know.\u00a0 I try to
\nseparate the music into five distinct points.
\nI spin around and put my head back, the chair tilting, and I look up
\ninto the space above me.\u00a0 I think of some
\nthings gone by.<\/p>\n
\nalone and sit there, awkward, feeling like I’m being examined.\u00a0 I feel like a stalker or, every once in a
\nwhile, like I’m being stalked.
\nUncomfortable in my skin.\u00a0 Sometimes,
\nin the warmer months, I sit in the yard and listen to the night sounds around
\nme, or I drive to a park and sit on the swings and think of my teenage self
\nsitting across from me, on the rotten picnic table, sucking down a Big Gulp and
\nstaring right back.\u00a0 Taking in the thick
\nair, the DC \u00a0spring sticking to my
\nclothes.<\/p>\n
\nit finds me in bed, fully clothed.\u00a0 I’ve
\nbeen known to call a friend or two, but all we ever talk about is the space between
\nus.<\/p>\n
\nwhose life now has become that space between us, I remember every Saturday
\nnight when we were going out. A year of Saturdays – some beautiful, some
\npainful.\u00a0 Leaning against a sheet metal
\nwall watching a woman dance, her taunting eyes on mine, my old girl thrown into
\na mix of faux lesbians, there’s a short in the back of my mind.\u00a0 Burning wires stink of West Virginia mountaintop air.\u00a0 Navigation lights in the distance, a weird lighthouse
\neffect fills the dorm room and mist obscures the library across the
\ncampus.\u00a0 Thin hands and long fingers play
\non my stomach, her angular face against my back, her words muddled in my
\nmind.\u00a0 I am surrounded by her smell,
\ncandles lit now, her body a shadow with a match.\u00a0 Her eyes come out of the gloom first like
\nsome strange animal.\u00a0 Too late to dodge
\nthe leap of the wolf, I was always mesmerized by the glare of the
\nhuntress.\u00a0 She materializes as she steps
\ncloser, doomsday’s queen.\u00a0 She towers
\nover me as I hold very still.\u00a0 Even
\nthough she looks down on me with pity, I still try to hide.<\/p>\n
\nafter our grand reunion, horrible cold biting through my clothes, leaning
\nagainst her car.\u00a0 She runs from the food
\nmart at a slant, everything seems to move that way when she’s around.\u00a0 On the curve of the horizon.\u00a0 She always ran with one hand held against her
\nstomach and the other one flying out wildly.
\nShe yells against the cold, a strange sort of housecat sound.<\/p>\n
\nto flirt.\u00a0 Instead, she has wasted away,
\nsickness inside.\u00a0 She wants to be sexy as
\nshe peels off her pants but she turns to tears and I hold her naked body as she
\nshudders against mortality.\u00a0 That’s no
\nway to spend a Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\nchanged.\u00a0 The chain smoking woman, that
\nlovely musk stained by cigarettes.\u00a0 That
\nsick twist that repulses and chokes.\u00a0 A
\nsmell that brings me back home to a road in Kensington, Maryland.\u00a0 A child torn apart, left alone to crawl
\ninside his skin.<\/p>\n
\nthat means nothing, really. I sit in the corner, alone, and order another beer,
\nlooking down at cocktail napkins from January.
\n“This is where I am,” the writing on the napkins begins.\u00a0 Crumpled blue ink.\u00a0 Hello birthday boy.<\/p>\n
\nthe tables.\u00a0 I look at her over the top
\nof my glasses as she winks and twists her hip, her chest out.\u00a0 See you next time cowboy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[86,353],"class_list":["post-2508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-birthday-articles","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2508"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2740,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508\/revisions\/2740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}